We came across Bharath in a hostel in Budapest, Hungary. We spoke to him early one morning in the Aboringal Hostel’s common room. He compared what he was taught about the United States and the Americans he has met during his travels.

The positive, idealistic images of the United States from his childhood began to shift when learning about the Indo Pakistan War, a 1971 conflict during which the Nixon administration supported Pakistan. The Soviets came to win over the Indian people. A real example of broad U.S. policy affecting individuals, real people.

Oh, and, we managed to get onto the topic of American criticism of outsourcing jobs to India. Bharath, defend this global political dynamic and speak for a nation of more than 1.1 billion people!

2 Comments

Correction i grew up in a household of 14 not forty sorry if my british accent screwed it up

Ian Fulguirinas

Oct 31, 2008 at 1:19 pm

It’s funny, I’ve never come across an Indian call centre worker before…I’ve even worked in a call centre myself. Maybe it’s just a U.S. thing…

One of the best moments was an English guy on the phone getting annoyed at me over the phone, because he wanted some personal details of a driver he felt had wronged him (I worked in a taxi company) and obviously, the company had very strict policies about giving out personal information about anyone (don’t. Not even to the police. If the police want it, they can submit a formal request in writing. I ignored this, as the police call centres are even busier than ours and don’t have time to be wasting faxing through requests, waiting for a reply, fixing the jammed fax machine etc, and they hardly ever requested personal information, but officially, there was a no information policy).

Eventually, he went into a big tirade about impersonal call centres, about how it wasn’t customer service, blah blah blah and then said something about me just being a worker in India plus some racist comments. I took great relish in telling him that, in fact, I had lived in Christchurch my entire life and was more of a local than he was, and also, the company has a strict policy regarding racism or any discrimination (don’t. And I didn’t ignore this policy, ever) and so I would have to end the call. And his number would be blocked, so if he wished to continue with his complaint, he would have to come into the office during normal office hours or submit an enquiry in writing.